The liquid with medicines to be added to a product container, such as an infusion bag, is in practice usually prepared manually by drawing a precisely determined quantity of dissolving liquid and/or diluent liquid out of a first container using a syringe, adding this dissolving liquid and/or diluent liquid to a second container having therein a solid component of a medicine, subsequently shaking this second container until the solid component is dissolved, and then adding a precisely determined quantity to the infusion bag. Because more than one component must sometimes be added, this method sometimes has to be repeated several times. With the thus filled second containers multiple infusion bags can then generally be prepared in accordance with a predetermined prescription.
The known method has a number of drawbacks. In the first place it is not possible to preclude the health of people carrying out the method day after day from being damaged, because many medicines, including cytostatics, radiopharmaceuticals, antibiotics and antibodies, can be to a greater or lesser extent harmful to health. Nor is it possible to preclude people carrying out the method day after day from developing RSI-type complaints because the same operations must be continually repeated. There is further also a risk for the patient, because mistakes cannot be precluded. Because infusion bags containing medicines must generally be unavailable within several hours, preparation practically always takes place in the hospital in which the patient is being nursed or treated. The number of preparations is continuously increasing, which has the result in many cases that the cleanroom of the hospital in which the method is applied is almost everywhere too small. A conversion in which the cleanroom is extended is very disruptive to operations and moreover expensive, while adding a second cleanroom a distance away is not attractive from a logistics viewpoint.
A device according to the preamble is known in practice with which the above described method can be performed in at least partially automated manner so as to thus avoid the associated problems.
The known device is suitable for automatically filling a product container in the form of a syringe with a liquid comprising one or more medicines. The known device comprises for this purpose an automatic machine which is adapted to manipulate the syringe for measured take-up of a diluent liquid from a first container and for subsequent addition thereto of a concentrated liquid component of a medicine by measured take-up thereof from a second container.
In the known device the containers hang upside down in the housing in order to facilitate take-up of liquid from the containers. This inevitably results in the containers beginning to leak. Not only are costly liquids lost here, but this also entails a health hazard for the people operating the device.